exDemMom...quick question since you obviously have been following this closely. Dr. Gupta said on CNN about an hour ago in response to a question about immunity if one survives Ebola that there are five strains of Ebola currently active (pretty sure that’s what he said)...and that surviving one strain would make a person immune to that particular strain but he wasn’t sure about the others.
Do you know if the studies that have been done in the past are lumping all the Ebolas together or are specifically about this current one that seems to be the biggest threat? It’s hard to keep track of all the “news” that is coming out now.
I am not aware of any study that investigates cross-immunity. I do not know how such a study could ethically be done, because the only way to do such a study would be to infect people that have survived Ebola with another strain of Ebola. This study cannot be done in monkeys because (as far as I know) Ebola is always fatal in monkeys, so there would be no surviving monkeys to challenge with a different strain.
In some viruses—dengue, for example—surviving one strain makes you MORE likely to die from a different strain. So it is hard to predict what effect immunity would have on a different strain.